6.1.17
Traditional Torah
Traditional Torah is what the world of religious Jews are supposedly offering. What makes clear this claim is a lie is the worship they offer to their leaders. The fact that they emphasize rituals does not make them traditional. Idolatry is not traditional Torah. The fact that they deny they are in fact worshiping their leaders does not make it any less true.
They use sophisticated means to reinvent Torah to mean that their leader ought to be worshiped. Sometimes this is worship offered to corpses [Kivrei Tzadikim] Graves of the righteous they call it. Sometimes it appears in other forms. But, in short, there is almost nothing in the religious world that corresponds to traditional Torah.
I myself am prone to being mixed up in this regard. I hear and listen to compelling speeches or read religious propaganda and get convinced easily.
There seems to be little that can provide immunization from such influences. This is because it is common for the religious to cloak their deceptions in traditional garb. All the better to catch naive people like me.
The truth is the religious world is demon possessed. I do not know how this happened. But for this reason it is best to avoid the whole scam. Or one could at least be sure to learn authentic Torah only. That is the Old Testament {Tenach}, The Two Talmuds, straight Musar of the Rishonim. And don't give the Sitra Achra a place in your heart to hold onto.
[I don't have any test for authenticity but I think the signature of the Gra on the excommunication should at least provide a starting point. If we know to exclude Torah from Sitra Achra, that can at least help to steer us in the right direction. But paying attention to the Gra would anyway exclude the entire religious world as I mentioned above.]
I did not want to make a list but authentic Torah mainly means the books of the Talmudic sages which are more than just the two Talmuds. The Rishonim also are legit. Achronim tend to be problematic. The best among the Achronim is Rav Rav Shach and Reb Chaim Soloveitchik with their commentaries on the Rambam and the Musar school of thought of Reb Israel Salanter.
[Just to be clear, I do not think Reb Nachman was in the category of the excommunication. So his books are OK and even good to learn. Also I should mention the Ari is very great, and it is a wonderful thing to learn his books. When I was in Safed I did not however learn his books, but I had learned the in NY before I got to Israel and I feel I had great benefit from them. The trouble is with books of mysticism after the Ari. The only good ones are those of the Ramchal, the Gra, Reb Yaakov Abuchatzeira, the Reshash (Shalom Sharabi). The rest are pure Sitra Achra and ought to be avoided at all cost.]
Still I am careful about mystics when the make mistake because, "Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" ("false in one thing, false in everything.") A witness who testifies falsely about one matter is not credible to testify about any matter.
[Reb Nathan the disciple of Reb Nachman created a new religion based on faith on Reb Nachman which mainly borrows from Christian themes but puts Reb Nachman into the center. This was certainly not the intention of Reb Nachman himself who was a sincere Jew and only intended to bring people to Torah.] Still the trouble is divergence from true Torah is like two lines
that are almost parallel but not quite. At first they are close. but then as time goes on and yo trace the path of the line, it diverges more and more fro the original line.
One can glimpse here the logical development of the
concept of merit and holiness qua faith in the tzadik in place of the
virtue of faith in God and Torah, which is inextricably linked to the higher virtue of menchlichkeit good character and human decency, we have in
its place a mere emotional "trust" in the transfer of the tzadik's merits to ourselves
. This will eventually become, in extremist
circles, a presumptuous "claim"to merit and holiness, and empowerment of Ruach HaKodesh[divine spirit].
For people far from authentic Torah yeshivas, my recommendation is to get at least one of the following books: The Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. The Chidushei HaRambam by Reb Chaim Soloveitchik, The chiushim of either of the disciples of Reb Chaim Reb Baruch Ber or Shimon Shkop.
Then to have one session fast just reading through them. And another session "Beiyun" review of one chapter for as long as it takes to "get it."
Books that come under the category of what the Gra put into חרם cherem excommunication I suggest throwing out because they are טמא unclean and make unclean anyone that touches them.
They destroy the lives of the people in whose home they are.
There is a good reason the Gra signed his name on the Cherem and I am surprised that people ignore it.
What they do to good honest people is horrific and they hide under a false cloak of pretended sanctity. There is nothing they touch that they do not ruin. If the Gra signed a cherem against them there are countless of victims that never got a hearing or a chance to have the crime committed against them heard and addressed. I am shocked that no one stands for justice. When terrible evils are committed against simple honest folk no one seems to care. They say it is none of their concern until it reaches their own doorstep. And then when they ask for help, everyone else says it is none of their concern. The Gra saw all this more than two hundred years ago and still people hide their heads in the sand.
The only person I heard that understood what the Gra was saying was Rav Sha ch and he also is ignored. [However I have seen a few blogs that deal with this [and they are doing great work]. I tried many times to call people's attention to the crimes with complete apathy as a response. So I gave up. I figure when people start caring about justice, that is when they will find help in their own lives. But as long as they ignore crimes committed against other, then I might as well be knocking on a brick wall. There is another reason I can not write about this. It is the power of the Sitra Acra itself. The Satan. And I am afraid of the powers of the Dark Side. So I avoid the subject as to my up-most ability. I try to write only about positive and happy themes. This is not because I care about people. It is rather because I care about myself and so I only want to think about happy things. I also have begun to wish to find kindness and charity in my heart for all.I saw the disciple of the Gra Reb Chaim from Voloshin said when one has enemies and judges them on the scales of merit-that is he starts to think of them as righteous then their hearts turn to good.
I would have been happy to pursue justice just like the Gra and Rav Shach, but with no friends and no allies there is nothing I can do.
They use sophisticated means to reinvent Torah to mean that their leader ought to be worshiped. Sometimes this is worship offered to corpses [Kivrei Tzadikim] Graves of the righteous they call it. Sometimes it appears in other forms. But, in short, there is almost nothing in the religious world that corresponds to traditional Torah.
I myself am prone to being mixed up in this regard. I hear and listen to compelling speeches or read religious propaganda and get convinced easily.
There seems to be little that can provide immunization from such influences. This is because it is common for the religious to cloak their deceptions in traditional garb. All the better to catch naive people like me.
The truth is the religious world is demon possessed. I do not know how this happened. But for this reason it is best to avoid the whole scam. Or one could at least be sure to learn authentic Torah only. That is the Old Testament {Tenach}, The Two Talmuds, straight Musar of the Rishonim. And don't give the Sitra Achra a place in your heart to hold onto.
[I don't have any test for authenticity but I think the signature of the Gra on the excommunication should at least provide a starting point. If we know to exclude Torah from Sitra Achra, that can at least help to steer us in the right direction. But paying attention to the Gra would anyway exclude the entire religious world as I mentioned above.]
I did not want to make a list but authentic Torah mainly means the books of the Talmudic sages which are more than just the two Talmuds. The Rishonim also are legit. Achronim tend to be problematic. The best among the Achronim is Rav Rav Shach and Reb Chaim Soloveitchik with their commentaries on the Rambam and the Musar school of thought of Reb Israel Salanter.
[Just to be clear, I do not think Reb Nachman was in the category of the excommunication. So his books are OK and even good to learn. Also I should mention the Ari is very great, and it is a wonderful thing to learn his books. When I was in Safed I did not however learn his books, but I had learned the in NY before I got to Israel and I feel I had great benefit from them. The trouble is with books of mysticism after the Ari. The only good ones are those of the Ramchal, the Gra, Reb Yaakov Abuchatzeira, the Reshash (Shalom Sharabi). The rest are pure Sitra Achra and ought to be avoided at all cost.]
Still I am careful about mystics when the make mistake because, "Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" ("false in one thing, false in everything.") A witness who testifies falsely about one matter is not credible to testify about any matter.
[Reb Nathan the disciple of Reb Nachman created a new religion based on faith on Reb Nachman which mainly borrows from Christian themes but puts Reb Nachman into the center. This was certainly not the intention of Reb Nachman himself who was a sincere Jew and only intended to bring people to Torah.] Still the trouble is divergence from true Torah is like two lines
that are almost parallel but not quite. At first they are close. but then as time goes on and yo trace the path of the line, it diverges more and more fro the original line.
One can glimpse here the logical development of the
concept of merit and holiness qua faith in the tzadik in place of the
virtue of faith in God and Torah, which is inextricably linked to the higher virtue of menchlichkeit good character and human decency, we have in
its place a mere emotional "trust" in the transfer of the tzadik's merits to ourselves
. This will eventually become, in extremist
circles, a presumptuous "claim"to merit and holiness, and empowerment of Ruach HaKodesh[divine spirit].
For people far from authentic Torah yeshivas, my recommendation is to get at least one of the following books: The Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. The Chidushei HaRambam by Reb Chaim Soloveitchik, The chiushim of either of the disciples of Reb Chaim Reb Baruch Ber or Shimon Shkop.
Then to have one session fast just reading through them. And another session "Beiyun" review of one chapter for as long as it takes to "get it."
Books that come under the category of what the Gra put into חרם cherem excommunication I suggest throwing out because they are טמא unclean and make unclean anyone that touches them.
They destroy the lives of the people in whose home they are.
There is a good reason the Gra signed his name on the Cherem and I am surprised that people ignore it.
What they do to good honest people is horrific and they hide under a false cloak of pretended sanctity. There is nothing they touch that they do not ruin. If the Gra signed a cherem against them there are countless of victims that never got a hearing or a chance to have the crime committed against them heard and addressed. I am shocked that no one stands for justice. When terrible evils are committed against simple honest folk no one seems to care. They say it is none of their concern until it reaches their own doorstep. And then when they ask for help, everyone else says it is none of their concern. The Gra saw all this more than two hundred years ago and still people hide their heads in the sand.
The only person I heard that understood what the Gra was saying was Rav Sha ch and he also is ignored. [However I have seen a few blogs that deal with this [and they are doing great work]. I tried many times to call people's attention to the crimes with complete apathy as a response. So I gave up. I figure when people start caring about justice, that is when they will find help in their own lives. But as long as they ignore crimes committed against other, then I might as well be knocking on a brick wall. There is another reason I can not write about this. It is the power of the Sitra Acra itself. The Satan. And I am afraid of the powers of the Dark Side. So I avoid the subject as to my up-most ability. I try to write only about positive and happy themes. This is not because I care about people. It is rather because I care about myself and so I only want to think about happy things. I also have begun to wish to find kindness and charity in my heart for all.I saw the disciple of the Gra Reb Chaim from Voloshin said when one has enemies and judges them on the scales of merit-that is he starts to think of them as righteous then their hearts turn to good.
I would have been happy to pursue justice just like the Gra and Rav Shach, but with no friends and no allies there is nothing I can do.
5.1.17
straight Torah and Bava Sali
I might not be the one to suggest
that learning Torah is important, for I myself have not been much of a
learner." My steps were directed towards two great yeshivas in NY, Shar
Yashuv and the Mir and really did not recognize their greatness until long
after I had abandoned them. אין קטיגור נעשה סניגור. ("The prosecutor cannot become the defending lawyer.")
Still, I should at least mention that in both places there was (and probably still is) a kind of spirit of learning and keeping Torah that is overwhelming. Just by being there you get something of an intense desire to learn and keep the holy Torah. And this was something that I heard also from the daughter of Bava Sali and his grandson Shimon Buso. His daughter told me quite plainly that Bava Sali was about learning and keeping straight Torah as defined in the books of Musar and the Beit Yoseph. [That is to say the three books of Joseph Karo, the כסף משנה (Keseph Mishna) on the Rambam, the בית יוסף [Beit Joseph] on the Tur and the שלחן ערוך (Shulchan Aruch) with its own נושי כלים (commentaries) the מגן אברהם (Magen Abraham) and the ט''ז (Taz).]
Still it behooves me to say that if I had taken the warning of the Gra seriously to avoid certain groups, I would have saved myself and my family from worlds of troubles. There really is no good reason why the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication should still be ignored after the fact that time has shown him to be correct.
What I am saying here is that I have a bad habit of abandoning great things to go grazing in foreign fields that turn out to be full of poison oak instead of green grass. But this bad habit has also given me experience and perspective.
Lithuanian Judaism. Who cannot see that thinking is prior to believing? For no one believes anything unless he has first thought that it is to be believed.
Litvak Judaism is sometimes criticized for being head based.[That is Lithuanian Judaism based in the Gra and the prime value of learning Torah].
It is certainly true that Torah is not a mere"intellectualism", and that a dry, philosophical knowledge of the 13 articles of faith of the Rambam alone does not constitute faith. But, just as certain critics of such "intellectual dryness" speak contemptuously of so called "head faith", it is also possible to take this controversy to the other extreme- as is often done in some circles, and speak of an emotion
based faith. Faith is certainly more than intellectual knowledge, but intellectual assent forms an indisputable part of it. For who cannot see that thinking is prior to believing? For no one believes anything unless he has first thought that it is to be believed. It is necessary that everything which is believed should be believed after thought has preceded. Belief itself is nothing else than to think with assent. For it is not everyone who thinks that believes,- since many think in order that they may not believe. But everybody who believes, thinks.
3.1.17
The West is undergoing a shift in world view.
The Alt Right. The West has gone through paradigm changes in which one belief system is weakened and another replaces it.The Alt Right is mainly against democracy and rule of the masses and wants something like a return of an aristocracy. They are also not very thrilled with the way Christianity has been absorbed into Leftism. So some are not interested in Christianity at all, but others still want it but not in its current day Leftist Political state of being.
At first I looked on this as unlikely. But then further thought got me to notice that the Roman Empire had lost interest in the old gods and adopted Christianity at an amazingly swift rate. So changes in world view are possible for the West as a whole.
The introduction of the Enlightenment philosophers took much longer than Christianity to become the ipso facto world view of the West.
In any case I agree that all this is subject to change.
In short the West seems to be rejecting Leftism as a whole, not just Rousseau, but John Locke also, and Christianity also - at least in its present form with a more or less communist Catholic church and highly politicized Protestant church.
I can't tell where this will go. My own approach is "none of the above". It is the basic idea of Gra, Rav Shach, Reb Israel Salanter and the Rambam. How to put that in a nutshell? To learn Torah. That is the entire Oral and Written Law, every single last word of the Tenach Old Testament, and the Two Talmuds with Rashi, Tosphot, Maharsha. The entire Rambam with the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. Plus the idea of the Rambam of learning the entire Metaphysics of Aristotle plus basic Physics and Math (i.e. String Theory, Field Theory, Abstract Algebra and Algebraic Topology). [Even though the Rambam only referred to ancient Greek Metaphysics, I would include Kant.]
But this is not to suggest the religious world in itself is so great. There is a problem there with the absence of compassion. And that does not enter by any means that I have seen. Certainly not by Musar--which is the first place you would expect to find it. And with no compassion, there is also no Torah. The solution to this problem is by no means obvious since it certainly was the primary concern of Reb Israel Salanter [and the reason he launched the Musar Movement]. But to me it seems that if compassion was what he was aiming at, then the whole Musar movement was an abject failure. But I certainly have nothing better to offer.
[The way you can see the problem in the religious world is fairly obvious because of their aversion of doing kindness. This has given me the strong impression that Reform and Conservative Jews are much closer to the true path of Torah.][Even so this still leaves me wondering what is wrong and what could be done. If Reb Israel Salanter's idea does not seem to work, then what would?][Reb Nachman incidentally noticed this same problem as you can see in the LM II ch 8. There he says that compassion left Israel, and the little bit that is left has בחינת אכזריות the essence of cruelty. I can't quote the whole piece from memory.]
At first I looked on this as unlikely. But then further thought got me to notice that the Roman Empire had lost interest in the old gods and adopted Christianity at an amazingly swift rate. So changes in world view are possible for the West as a whole.
The introduction of the Enlightenment philosophers took much longer than Christianity to become the ipso facto world view of the West.
In any case I agree that all this is subject to change.
In short the West seems to be rejecting Leftism as a whole, not just Rousseau, but John Locke also, and Christianity also - at least in its present form with a more or less communist Catholic church and highly politicized Protestant church.
I can't tell where this will go. My own approach is "none of the above". It is the basic idea of Gra, Rav Shach, Reb Israel Salanter and the Rambam. How to put that in a nutshell? To learn Torah. That is the entire Oral and Written Law, every single last word of the Tenach Old Testament, and the Two Talmuds with Rashi, Tosphot, Maharsha. The entire Rambam with the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. Plus the idea of the Rambam of learning the entire Metaphysics of Aristotle plus basic Physics and Math (i.e. String Theory, Field Theory, Abstract Algebra and Algebraic Topology). [Even though the Rambam only referred to ancient Greek Metaphysics, I would include Kant.]
But this is not to suggest the religious world in itself is so great. There is a problem there with the absence of compassion. And that does not enter by any means that I have seen. Certainly not by Musar--which is the first place you would expect to find it. And with no compassion, there is also no Torah. The solution to this problem is by no means obvious since it certainly was the primary concern of Reb Israel Salanter [and the reason he launched the Musar Movement]. But to me it seems that if compassion was what he was aiming at, then the whole Musar movement was an abject failure. But I certainly have nothing better to offer.
[The way you can see the problem in the religious world is fairly obvious because of their aversion of doing kindness. This has given me the strong impression that Reform and Conservative Jews are much closer to the true path of Torah.][Even so this still leaves me wondering what is wrong and what could be done. If Reb Israel Salanter's idea does not seem to work, then what would?][Reb Nachman incidentally noticed this same problem as you can see in the LM II ch 8. There he says that compassion left Israel, and the little bit that is left has בחינת אכזריות the essence of cruelty. I can't quote the whole piece from memory.]
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